MARKETMAXX

TEST YOUR hand at selling corn and soybeans in the MarketMaxx game that enters its second year. The contest, sponsored by Farm Industry News's sister publication The Corn and Soybean Digest, is designed to help growers become better marketers.

Last year more than 3,500 players signed on to MarketMaxx to trade corn and soybeans. In the corn contest, the player with the highest price for all of the allotted bushels won use of a Massey Ferguson MF 9000 self-propelled combine for one year. The winner of the soybean contest won the use of a Massey Ferguson tractor for one year. Other winners took home a Mid-Tech GPS guidance system and a computer with software from Syngenta.

Steve Mercer, a Kearney, NE, grower who played the MarketMaxx game, says, “A good thing about MarketMaxx was that you depended more on your gut feeling to make corn or soybean trades. We saw how those trades would function without actually being in the market. Some things we learned from those gut feelings were used in our actual trades, and we've benefited from them.”

In the 2006 contest, each entrant will be given a simulated value of 100,000 bu. of corn and 50,000 bu. of soybeans as a trading base at the time he or she enters. Participants will place simulated orders in quantities on dates and times they determine during the course of the contest.